Tagged Giveaways

Independent Bookstore Day is Saturday! Check out the giveaway we’re doing to celebrate.

April 22, 2024

It’s almost one of our favorite days of the year— Independent Bookstore Day! To celebrate, here’s a roundup of some of the stores we’ll be visiting, why we love indies, and a big ol’ giveaway we’re doing to help share the love.

Independent Bookstore Day is held the last Saturday in April every year as a way for stores to celebrate their communities (and vice versa!). Some stores do special edition releases, merch, signings, and other fun shenanigans, and we’re really hyped to be celebrating the celebration this year!

It’s no secret (we hope) that we love indies. We have books about protecting bookstores, stickers, and a whole project centered around the fact that indie bookstores are an incredible community resource and ally in the fight against a certain online monopoly trying to eradicate them.

We’re going to try and visit some of our local (and not-so-local) stores this Saturday! Kalen, Elly, and Joe are hanging out at IBPA in Denver, but they’re hoping to swing by Shop at MATTER and Munity Information Cafe. Terry and Anna-Lisa are going to try and stop by Spoke & Word and Annie Bloom’s. Abby (me!) is pumped to finally visit Possible Futures on our way to the Connecticut Fiber Festival. Other staff are going to their indies, too! We hope to see you there.

We wish we could check out EVERY STORE because they’re all kickass, but alas, we haven’t invented time travel or perfected our cloning techniques, so you’ll have to go in our stead. Click here to see if an indie near you is joining the party this weekend.

The Big Microcosm IBD Giveaway!

As a fun celebration for IBD, we’re doing a giveaway!

We’re giving one lucky winner a prize pack of Microcosm titles from our first decade of publishing, valued at over $230!

To enter, simply purchase or special order a Microcosm-published title at a US indie on Saturday the 27th. Online orders count, but due to shipping costs the giveaway is only open to folks with an address in the United States.

Then you just upload your receipt or proof of purchase to this Google Form by April 30th to be entered to win. Other details, terms, and conditions about the giveaway can be found on the entry form. Winners will be contacted within the week.

Thanks again for supporting indie publishing and bookstores. We genuinely can’t do any of this without you.

See you at the bookstore!

Welcome to Portland, have a book!

July 06, 2018 — by Cyn

This month welcomes the new edition of a staff favorite, This is Portland: The City You’ve Heard You Should Like! This colorful charmer highlights so many of our favorite details about living in the weirdest little city.

Updated for 2018 with 50% additional material, This is Portland is a first-hand look at a city that people can’t seem to stop talking about. It’s a guidebook of sorts, but not to restaurants and sightseeing. Instead, Alexander Barrett is your friendly guide to the quirky characters and atmosphere of Portland, Oregon and how fun, beautiful, and ridiculous it can be.

To celebrate this rad new edition, we’re doing something a little different — a Free Library book drop (or, scavenger hunt, if you will). Starting today (Friday July 6th and continuing through the month, Portland’s Microcosmonauts will be dropping Microcosm loot at free libraries throughout town.

From the comic catalogs that tell Microcosm’s story to our newest catalogs featuring a full Book Tour board game on the back and more, like Microcosm stickers and postcards; coupons good for any purchase at microcosm.pub; freebie books, like old advanced copies of Fix Your Clothes and Wild Fermentation; first editions of This is Portland, plus a few of the new edition!

We’ll be posting photos, hints, and behind the scenes clips on our instagram feed, so if you’re looking to hunt down some loot, take a look!

And if you’re not in Portland? Tell us a weird, charming thing about where _you_ live on instagram (with the hashtag #winpdx) for a chance to win a 1st edition copy for yourself!

Woah. It’s National Bike Month.

May 08, 2018 — by Cyn

So, here we are in the first weeks of May, surrounded by books about feminist cannabis, Portland eccentricities, and, of course, bikes: bicycle infrastructure, social justice in bicycling, bikes you can color, and more. And that’s cool– we kinda love bikes.

But this post is not actually about us, it’s about you; winning books. Because it’s Bike Month. And what’s my favorite way to celebrate a month dedicated to sharing and learning about bikes and bicycling culture? Come on, you know the answer…

A giveaway!

This month we’re giving away 10 copies of Bikequity: Money, Class, and Bicycling, edited by Elly Blue and featuring work by Tamika Butler, Adonia Lugo, Do Jun Lee, Gretchin Lair, V.K. Henry, Lauren Hage, Tammy Melody Gomez, Phill Melton, Cat Caperello, Joe Biel, Julie Brooks, Kassandra Karaitis, Katura Reynolds, Rebecca Fish Ewan, Rhienna Renée Guedry, and Adrian Lipscombe.

And this time, there’s also a GRAND PRIZE:

ONE WINNER will also get a copy of the brand new book by Adonia Lugo, Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, and Resistance, which won’t be available in bookstores until October.

Interested yet? Here’s more about the books…

In Bikequity, Elly Blue curates a writing collection that explores the intersections between social justice and the bicycling world. The contributors to this volume of Taking the Lane zine tackle of the potentials and realities and unintended consequences of trying to create a better world using human-powered transportation.

In Bicycle/Race, Adonia Lugo, PhD, paints an unforgettable picture of Los Angeles—and the United States—from the perspective of two wheels. This is a book of borderlands and intersections, a cautionary tale about the dangers of putting infrastructure before culture, and a coming-of-age story about power and identity.

The giveaway runs till May 28th, so enter, below, soon.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So, as usual, you have several different ways to enter: following us on social media, tweeting about the giveaway, giving your opinion, or signing up for our newsletter. Choose one, a few, or all of em, and may the odds be in your favor!

5 Ways to Fight SAD (& win books!)

February 12, 2018 — by Cyn

Feeling down more than usual in these grey (or white, if you’re buried in snow) winter days? It could be “SAD.”

With two mental health books coming out next month, and the grey days of Portland still coming and going, we’re talking with Dr. Faith and Set Sytes about Seasonal Affective Disorder, AND giving away free books!

So, you think you’ve got SAD.

First: Don’t Panic.
But also, don’t ignore it.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is a type of depression that ebbs and flows with the seasons, typically causing extra depression during the winter months. This is especially common for folks with mood disorders already, women, and folks who live further from the equator.
Winter is the big SAD season, though some do experience it during summertime (me, right here, for real!), and it can often take sufferers by surprise.

A Survival Guide For Imaginative Pessimists

Set Sytes, author of How Not to Kill Yourself, says this about his experience with SAD:

“I often find things more difficult during the Winter months (which in Britain is 11 months of the year). I get much less daylight (although I’m better than I used to be on that, when a week could go where I wouldn’t see the sun), I’m always cold and without the motivation to move to warm up, and the weather is so miserable not only do I not want to go out but I’m not happy inside too. While hot weather can have its own reasons for lack of productivity, the cold months can encourage depressive symptoms and make you more interested in curling up in a blanket than getting anything done, especially if you’re worried about heating bills. It’s hard to engage your brain and be creative and productive when you’re cold, there’s little sunlight and you’ve been sleeping in in a conscious (or unconscious) attempt to hibernate through it all.”

In This Is Your Brain on Depression (coming Dec 2018), Dr. Faith defines it loosely as “winter blues thought to be caused by lack of sunlight.”

“When my brother left sunny Texas to go away to college in Boston, his SAD was horrible. He went from thinking snow was pretty and exotic to thinking snow was some kind of evil plan from the universe to repeatedly beat him in the face. The light box our mom sent him was stupendously helpful.” – This is Your Brain on Depression: Finding Your Path To Getting Better (zine version available here)

What to do about it?

When I asked about SAD, the first thing Dr. Faith noted was that too many people ignore the recurring symptoms: “If a tooth fell out of your mouth every February, you’d see the dentist and figure out why,” Dr. Faith points out. “S.A.D. should be taken just as seriously.”

“I’ve seen a lot of people do well with adding vitamin D in their diet and using sun lamps (blue light that mimics the missing sunlight they are getting…there’s lots of evidence behind this treatment),” she says.

Set’s advice? More layers!

“I often wear 5 layers indoors and sometimes include scarf gloves and hat in that! And my best is 7 outdoor layers, but then I’m strange and nobody else seems to do that) means you’re warmer but don’t have to spend as much on heating (and you’re more comfortable just sitting in one spot). It also means you can move around the house and maybe god forbid open a window for a few minutes without suddenly catching hypothermia. Worrying less about cold will relax your survival skills enough to hopefully think about more creative pursuits.

Also, candles, candles, candles.”

“The big thing that I always ask everyone is about their sleep,” Dr. Faith adds. “Getting enough good quality sleep is the foundation for all wellness. People are always surprised when I point out that their sleep is complete shit and getting more sleep will make everything else far easier to manage. Sleep hygiene should probably be it’s own zine, eh? It’ll def be a chapter in Unfuck Your Body.”

Set totally agrees with the doc here:

“It sucks setting alarms for yourself but sometimes it’s worth encouraging your sleeping pattern to shift not necessarily to a “normal” time frame (who decides what normal is) but at least one where you get more sunlight in the day. Even if you’re more creative at night, it helps to be able to separate each day into both day and night, otherwise it just all becomes one big murky dark abyssal pointless mess and there becomes no sense in doing something at one time to another – and when that’s how you think, you end up never doing things at any time.”

The Breakdown:

1. For your bad SAD days, try these tips from our authors:

2. Add Vitamin D to your diet.

3. Get (or make) a light box; get more sun.

4. Stay warm; add layers and blankets if you must.

5. Get enough SLEEP!

The Giveaway

For a chance at our two upcoming mental health books to help get you through the winter slump, check out our Anti-SAD giveaway packs below, and enter to win BOTH books by entering below, with extra entries for following us on social media or checking out some of our pages.

Winners get THREE free books:

–This is Your Brain on Anxiety: What Happens & What Helps

–How Not To Kill Yourself: A Survival Guide for Imaginative Pessimists (pictured above)

-1 Random health & wellness back list title or galley

-AND our Book Tour Boardgame, to fight back against those bored winter blues!

Ends Feb 22nd.

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New Giveaway Process

January 24, 2018 — by Cynthia Marts

FINAL of Fix Your Clothes: The Sustainable Magic of Mending, Patching, & Darning

For years Microcosm has run pretty rad giveaways through our friends over at Goodreads. This year, however, their terms have changed to include new charges for giveaways that we’re not quite willing or able to pay.

So instead, the next couple months will feature giveaways here, on our blog, instead, while we try out other options.

To try one out, we’re running a test giveaway below for some of last years Advanced Reader Copies. It’s super easy to enter using your email address or facebook, AND you get extra entries for doing cool shit, like tweeting about the book, answering a question, or visiting us on social medias.

I’m offering five copies of the advanced reader copies of Fix Your Clothes: The Sustainable Magic of Mending, Patching, & Darning.

Never even heard of this book? Here’s the description:

Ever had to say goodbye to a favorite item of clothing because of a busted zipper, fallen hem, or gaping hole? Want to save money and the world by not buying new clothes at the time? Concerned about the labor practices of fast fashion? Learn to repair your clothes from this cheerful illustrated guide. Raleigh Briggs, author and illustrator of the bestselling Make Your Place and Make It Last takes us on a mending journey through stocking your supplies, quick fixes, types of knots and stitches, buttons, mending seams, patching holes, darning holes, hemming, fixing zippers, waterproofing canvas, leather, and nylon, and so much more! Raleigh’s style is simple, playful, friendly, fun, and builds your confidence. You can do it!

Win one!

Enter below for a chance at one of 5 copies of the Fix Your Clothes arc, by the legendary DIY zinester Raleigh Briggs, now through January 31st.

a Rafflecopter giveaway